I dont know if this was discussed before but I will ask again. I have noticed that the US-NAVY Poseidon aircraft they feature raked wings like the 787 and the 78i plus there is a small antenna on the top of the tail which i have seen on several BBJ's. My question is are thsoe options available to the regular 737's or only for the military and BBJ's.

Quoting beeweel15 (Thread starter):My question is are thsoe options available to the regular 737's or only for the military and BBJ's.

For sufficient money, Boeing will engineer anything the customer wants That said, they're not currently available options so it's going to cost a lot. There are mission-specific reasons for the raked tips on the P-8 that don't apply to the general military or BBJ missions.

Quoting BMI727 (Reply 1):That could probably be applied to commercial models. I want to say that it's a VHF antenna, which is unnecessary for commercial 737s.

The raked wingtip extensions are on the 737 since the original winglets did not perform well in the P8A flight envelope. The P8A is designed for low altitude conditions, so it is required to handle icing, etc which doesn't work well with the existing aviation partners winglet.

Also the navy doesn't care much about wingspan, so the raked wingtips don't impact them as much since they don't have to fit in tight gates.

The navy is paying enough and getting the airplane so customized that they can get anything they want. The 737NGs for the Air Force have winglets.

If you have never designed an airplane part before, let the real designers do the work!

Quoting tdscanuck (Reply 2):For sufficient money, Boeing will engineer anything the customer wants That said, they're not currently available options so it's going to cost a lot. There are mission-specific reasons for the raked tips on the P-8 that don't apply to the general military or BBJ missions.

Can you discuss those? I know that the increased span is the main drawback of raked tips (and the increased bending moment, but they seem to have solved that). Let's assume a BBJ customer doesn't care about span so much. Is there a barrier? Like not certified for civilian use or something?

Quoting DocLightning (Reply 5):Can you discuss those? I know that the increased span is the main drawback of raked tips (and the increased bending moment, but they seem to have solved that). Let's assume a BBJ customer doesn't care about span so much. Is there a barrier? Like not certified for civilian use or something?

The way the military works is that if a design is used jointly for commercial and military, then it can be used freely under typical export regulations. When a part is exclusively used on a military plane it often falls under ITAR Military Only export restrictions. Those regulations can be overcome but they make it very difficult to develop technology on the P8A and then move it to commercial operations. Usually technology goes the other way to help with red tape.

From what I have heard the winglet has no anti-ice which poses a problem for flights with ice build up. The normal 737 is not flying continuously in icing conditions so it isn’t much of a problem to have some extra drag on the winglet. However the P8A has to be able to continuously operate at low altitudes as a part of its mission since it isn’t necessarily cruising at altitutde. It has to have on location low altitude performance. From what I understand a raked wingtip does better for icing conditions.

If you have never designed an airplane part before, let the real designers do the work!

Quoting DocLightning (Reply 5):I know that the increased span is the main drawback of raked tips (and the increased bending moment, but they seem to have solved that).

The P-8 carries external wing stores and has a bomb bay...they had to redo a ton of structure anyway. Tweaking it to handle the raked tips couldn't have been that big a deal once they "opened the box."

Quoting DocLightning (Reply 5):Let's assume a BBJ customer doesn't care about span so much. Is there a barrier? Like not certified for civilian use or something?

It's not certified on the 737 for civilian use but that's just a testing thing. There's no technical reason you can't fit them or certify them, there just hasn't been any demand or business case to do it.